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Every once in awhile life presents you with some thorny and apparently unresolvable dilemma. Last night, for instance, I sitting in front of my television set watching Friday Night Without Borders and wondering whether I should do a little reading for some English course I’m taking in order to keep qualifying for student loans, or whether my time would be better spent forging income tax receipts for one of my little business ventures. One the one hand, as any university student knows, it can be exhausting writing three thousand word essays about books that you haven’t actually read. With this in mind, it seemed wise to at least scan the dust jacket of Jane Eyre. On the other hand, I didn’t like the threatening tone of the latest letter from Revenue Canada. What to do?

Fortunately, I was spared from having to make this decision by virtue of the fact that the fascists at the power company finally followed through on their disconnection threats, leaving me with only the glow of the ashes in the bowl of my hash pipe for warmth and light. Clearly, there was nothing else for it but to head out for a night of drunken gambling at the cock fights.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that my adult peep show/ultrasound clinic hadn’t turned out to be the cash cow my “audited” financial statement and investment prospectus may have suggested that it would be, I was in the awkward position of having to avoid certain unreasonable and violently disposed investors. For this reason, I have spent the last few months entering and exiting my residence by means of leaping from one rooftop to the next, and crawling in and out of my attic window.

It was at the very moment, last night, when one careless footfall caused me to come plummeting through the skylight of my cretinous neighbour, Cedric Idris Idris Jones, landing face down on his kitchen table and incurring deep lacerations to my face, hands and torso, that I began to ponder whether I might benefit from taking a good gander at the choices I tend to make in life, with a view to perhaps tweaking them in a slightly more socially responsible direction. Lying there, semi consciousness and bleeding profusely, it seemed to come to me in a burst of enlightenment, that much of my life had been…well, a fiasco. As if in a vision bestowed on me from above, I saw the pain and suffering that my irresponsible actions and nefarious ways had visited upon others, and I felt a great sense of shame and anguish. I formed a resolution, then and there, to devote the rest of my life to something worthwhile. For too long, I had simply taken up valuable space on our planet. From this moment on, things would change.

Thank Christ that this morbid sentiment, these bizarre delusions (no doubt triggered by shock and loss of plasma) quickly faded after I came to my senses in the ICU.

Still, though, this close call with the Grim Reaper has had a lingering effect on me. Perhaps, by way of earning myself a “Get Out of Hell Free Card” to keep up my sleeve, I’ll send a little of the cash settlement I get from suing Idris Idris Jones to an orphanage or a rehabilitation centre. Assuming that there’s anything left over after all the hookers and tequila.